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Predicament: Water, Water Everywhere 3/26/2012 8:57:17 PM
A few years back, I was still one of those people drinking water from a bottle. I believed that the water from the bottle was much cleaner than what we got from the tap. Not that the tap was absolutely bad, but water from the bottle was better. Until, I heard from the news that some, if not all bottled water actually came from the tap. So, slowly, I tasted the tap water and tested it by drinking from it on some regular basis. Now, I don’t spend a great deal buying bottled water. I fill my bottle (the ones I bought in vending machines) with water and from there, I drink my refreshing water.
Bottled water in the United State was not prevalent before. I remember a friend taking me to a bottled water tasting party. A Party! There was a shoot in San Francisco wherein each bottle was presented to the public and you could buy these bottled water; $4 for one, $10 for the other and even $20 for some other. I said, “Kapuwhe!” But nonetheless, I bought myself a bottle, the one that cost $10; not too expensive and not too cheap. It took several more months but less than a year for the bottled industry to take off; and take off it did!
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When I was in Europe and dating my European girlfriend, we were at a restaurant and we ordered our food. Then the waiter asked us what drinks we should have. I normally say tap water whenever I am alone eating by myself. But she was shocked to hear me say the word, tap. She halted me and told the waiter that we should have gas water. What was gas water? It was fizzled water and not your ordinary non-fizzled water. I just can imagine how pretentious Europeans are. But that’s the way they grew up. It was not being pretentious; it’s their way of life. Even my German friends bought their water, bottled.
What we want was just clean water; water we can drink, wash ourselves in and wash everything else. We don’t want dirty water that will make us sick or make ourselves and our possessions dirtier. So in the pursuit of clean water, we could just imagine how much we convolute ourselves to pursue clean water.
But in other parts of the world, dirty water is still alright; for water is water. I had been sick when I was in the Philippines because I sip water or drank a perfectly healthy coconut juice but cooled with ice. I want to emphasize “sip” and “ice”. I did not mean to say “drink” or have negated the use of ice in cooling my drink. But nonetheless, I got ill. But to those people, drinking water or cooling their drink with ice is perfectly normal. Nothing happens to them. Although it can be cheap for them to improve their water quality (relative to western standards), it still is very expensive or unimaginable for them to create a reasonable water quality.
Here in the United State, Texas experienced its most drastic drought. It leads to fires and the depletion of their precious water. It leads to neighboring towns buying water from other towns or water being trucked in. For those who have water, still, it was a fight for rights; whether the recreational folks and tourism have more rights than the rice farmer downriver.
Water, water everywhere; the planet has 70% of its area in water. You could see water everywhere but not all of it is usable by humans; the drinking and the washing. We need clean water. And with the growing population, the fight for water will only persist. There is no solution, yet to this dilemma.
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